Most of us must have heard this old saying “What you think about, you bring about.” In fact, our thoughts create our reality. Everything that we experience in our life originates from our dominant thoughts. We can become the master of our life by becoming aware of our thought patterns, by controlling the nature of our dominant thoughts and by replacing our negative, unwanted thoughts with more positive ones which are in alignment with what we want to manifest in our physical world.

Our dominant thoughts can either be positive or negative and whether our thoughts are positive or negative our mind will always act on them and we will as a result experience the corresponding situation in our life. If our dominant thoughts are positive, we will have a more positive life. However, if our dominant thoughts are negative, we will attract more negative experiences in our life. As James Allen, author of “As a man thinketh” rightly said “A man’s mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind.”

Every effect that we perceive in our life has a specific cause which has its origin in our mental world. In other words, the conditions and circumstances of our life are the results of our dominant and repetitive thoughts and beliefs. Every facet of our life, from the state of our relationships to the state of our finances, career or happiness is correctly revealing our thoughts and beliefs. If the results that we are experiencing in any area of our life is the opposite of what we want, it simply means that our thoughts are not correct. Once again James Allen clearly stated “Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself.”

Most of us however believe that the reverse is true. We believe that the circumstances or situations that we face in life are responsible for the thoughts and feelings that we have. We are not aware that it is our thoughts that are creating the circumstances and situations that we experience in our life. We have the power to change our circumstances in life by being aware of our thoughts and by replacing the unwanted negative thoughts with more positive ones. We all have this power to consciously choose the type of thoughts we want to focus our attention on. We can either choose to let our unwanted, useless and negative thoughts control our life and we become victims of our circumstances or we can choose to consciously control our thoughts and become a victor.

It is important to know that not all our thoughts have the same creative power. The attractive power of any particular thought depends on how frequently we have that thought and on how strong are the emotions and feelings associated with that thought. The more energy we give to a particular thought and the stronger the feelings associated with that thought, the greater its power to attract its corresponding circumstance into our life. Our one-off thoughts do not have the same creative power as our repetitive dominant thoughts. The average person has around 60,000 thoughts a day and our aim is not to control each and every thought. Instead, we should learn to consciously control our dominant thoughts

We must learn to be aware of our repetitive thoughts and make sure that most of our thoughts are positive in order to attract better experiences in our life. If most of our thoughts are negative or useless, we can immediately replace these unwanted thoughts with more positive ones. One way to instantaneously counterbalance the power of a negative thought is to consciously and deliberately replace it with its opposite, positive equivalent. For instance, if someone thinks “I am always late and I never achieve my goals”, the person can mentally replace that thought with “I am on time and I can achieve my goals now”. Another way to stop dwelling on negative thoughts is to use the “cancel, cancel, cancel” technique taught in the well-known Silva Method. Every time we catch ourselves thinking an unwanted or negative thought, we can mentally say to ourselves “cancel, cancel, cancel” and immediately replace that thought with a positive affirmation or statement which is in alignment with who we want to be or what we want to experience in life.

Our life is the perfect reflection of our thoughts and as Ernest Holmes said “Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it.” Whether we are aware of it or not we are constantly creating our reality through our thought power. If we are directed by our dominant thoughts, why not fill our minds with things that will benefit us? We have to choose our thoughts wisely and focus on the things and experiences that we want to manifest in our life. We can all follow the wise advice of Henry David Thoreau who said “As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.”